From the Inside
by Our Man Monol
Summary: A young telepath in Westchester gives insight on what he has glimpsed from the minds of the Xavier Institute ... (Note: Rated R just because I don't know how far I'll go with it in the future, as it is a work in progress)
1. Introduction

Chapter One: Introduction - 9/20/01  
  
It's much easier to admit to yourself that you're a mutant than to admit it to   
others. Take me for instance: sitting in class and dipping into the minds of others   
has become, oddly enough, as normal as cracking my gum or biting my nails. Of course,   
there was, like I guess it is with all people like me, that period where I wouldn't let   
myself "succumb" to that urge to see what others were thinking, where I felt guilty and   
ashamed whenever the kids at school talked about the latest mutant terrorist attack or the  
latest person suspected to be one. And then, like I suppose every other mutant does, I   
woke up one morning and found myself sinking inside my sister, flipping through pages and  
pages of memories that I never wanted to know, and even though I was kind of grossed out,  
I didn't feel guilty or dirty or ashamed. I felt like a mutant, and that was ok.   
But, don't rush away yet - this isn't a stupid coming of age story about coming   
to terms with my mutantcy or telling my family and friends about it, nobody wants to hear  
anything fluffy like that. This is about the hundreds of times when I've sat on my bad and   
gazed out the window at the focus of all the kids in Westchester's curiosities - the Xavier   
Institute for Higher Learning.  
If you've ever lived in a small town, passed through one, read any novel taking place  
in one or watched any episode of Scooby Doo, you know that every little town, which is the   
classification that Westchester falls under, has one building, or plot of land, or person or   
landmark that is the focus of so much speculation and supernatural rumors, that nobody can ever   
know what goes on there, or whether the howling of the wind or tapping of tree branches on   
the windows or the creaking of the stairs outside your bedroom is just your imagination, or   
if it's Boo Radley or the Goat-Man or the Jersey Devil or the Demon Cat creeping through your   
house.   
Xavier's was like that for us. Except, the huge, brick mansion seemed to live up to all the   
stories that circulated our community about it. There always seemed to be some sort of haze   
or strange light hovering over it, and sometimes screams and muffled sounds would drift down   
the hill into our open windows, and we'd stop to gaze up at the place, which was actually kind   
of welcoming for a haunted house. And, on Summer evenings when we'd lay on our yards and watch  
fireflies, you could always hear the roar of jet engines in the air above, but you never saw any  
lights, and the nearest Air Force Base wasn't for some disgusting amount of miles.   
So, yeah, you should be able to imagine the way I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I   
found myself slipping into the mind of someone riding in a peerless, black Buick with tinted   
windows as it rolled lazily up our street and on through the gates to the School.  
  
  
*Fin*  
*Continued Next Chapter*  



	2. the Storm

Chapter 2 - the Storm - 9/20/01  
  
It's always a very strange feeling, at least for me, when I find myself unconsciously  
sliding my consciousness into that of another person. But, it is especially confusing to slip   
tenderly into the head of a woman (Ha! That alone is baffling by itself!) who's mind encompasses  
the atmosphere, all its weather patterns, the clouds the rain the thunder in the distance the   
refreshing breeze blowing through - it feels like something akin to a major migraine for the   
first few seconds, until your mind gets used to the massive amounts of meteorological data being  
fed to your brain.   
So, there I was, with a perfectly clear picture of myself. I was a beautiful, confident  
woman with chocolate brown skin and silky, white hair that flowed down my neck and splayed   
gracefully over my shoulders and back. My body was almost flawlessly toned, from years and   
years of physical training and sparring and abuse (Yeah, you try redirecting a tornado or   
increasing the humidity of the air around you a thousand-fold with just a thought!) and my   
mind and reflexes were near peak human condition from just as many years and years of training,   
all of these years easily recallable to me. My eyes were a stunning, ocean blue, except for   
the times when I rode the wind or hurled lightning bolts like baseballs or sat in a rainstorm   
of my own creation, and then they were as white as the hair on my head or the teeth in my mouth.   
As white as the voluptuous, white-leather costume that I sometimes found myself wearing, which   
always clung to my body like it had been painted on, showing off every little curve and every   
perfect muscle. And, speaking of muscles, what excellent hips I had ...  
The thoughts and emotions and memories in this woman, me, Ororo Munroe, were stunning.   
As stunning as the fact that she was wearing a blue thong with a black and red X on the waistband  
. Like any heterosexual, adolescent boy my body (not the gorgeous African's Goddess's body but   
mine, the one with the fading tan and slightly oily skin sitting prone on my bed) reacted before   
my thoughts could catch up. The feeling of having my own firm breasts under a flimsy, white,   
cashmere sweater was almost too much to handle ...!   
But, I managed to get past the details of her physique and enter into her thoughts,   
to delve further into the strange memories that ran rampant around her head. I was Ororo Munroe,  
I was Storm, the living embodiment of Mother Nature, able to control the elements with less   
than a thought, trained in hundreds of different fighting techniques by a man named Logan,   
friend to Scott and Jean and student of Professor Charles Xavier and role-model to a beaming   
young girl named Jubilee and lover of...No, wait...I lived at Xavier's...And the plot thickens ...   
My name was Ororo Munroe, Storm, and I had been across half the universe and back and seen death  
and birth and sometimes awoke screaming because of the disgusting things I had seen in my years   
as an X-Man. An X-Man ...!!!   
Of course, everybody who was anybody (meaning anyone with a television, radio or   
computer) knew who the X-Men were: an outlaw band of mutants who were mainstays on America's   
Most Wanted while also being rumored to share members with the Avengers and been involved in   
many failed Mutant Terrorist attempts. The idea that the X-Men were housed in Xavier's   
Institute for Higher Learning (what a front for a bunch of outlaw mutants...) was dazzling   
and intriguing and mind-blowing...Ok, off the subject: my family and I had frequented the   
little Westchester United Methodist Church for as long as I could remember, but in all my   
years I had never offered any sort of a prayer when I hadn't been forced to, but that day I   
thanked God, or whatever the Hell was flaunting his cosmic powers up there by creating mutants,   
for giving me the ability to uncover secrets that the other kids at school never dreamed of   
and being able to look down at myself and see cleavage the likes of which I'd not soon forget...   
So, back on track, those few minutes of psychic eves-dropping started me off on an   
amazing new hobby - you'd never believe the kinds of things and people and creatures living   
in and around that mansion, but you will by the time I'm finished...   
  
*Fin*  
*Continued Next Chapter*  



	3. Frozen Resolve

Chapter 3 - Frozen Resolve or "Cold Showers Always Made Me Hotter..."  
Notes: If you're offended (God forbid ...!) by implications of homosexuality in main characters,   
you might wanna skip this chapter! Or you might wanna read it and be offended, just don't send   
me any nasty emails!!! ^_~  
  
It took me a week or so to recover from the shock and almost traumatic arousal of taking  
a trip inside Ororo Munroe's shoes, but when I did my hungry, hormonal, psychic mind went   
searching one lonely evening for someone more flamingly alluring as Storm was, if there was such  
a person, but what I found was the most hormonal (more so than I was, and that's someone to look  
out for!) and sexually suppressed person I've ever come into mental contact with: Bobby Drake.  
I was attractive, I knew that for a fact, enough girls had made that known to me over   
the years. I had tousled, brown hair, sharp blue eyes and laughing features, while my physique   
reflected the years and years of rigorous training and exercise I'd been through in my life. I   
probably could've been a model, with clothes or without, for God had gifted me graciously, and   
in more ways than one, but I was still painfully insecure and terrified out of my mind of what   
might happen if I tried something on the gorgeous body leaning over the pool table before me.   
I experienced the familiar "tightening of the pants" as the butt in front of me arched in the   
air and he nailed a difficult shot.   
I was Bobby Drake, and as Bobby sat down quickly to hide his sudden hard-on, I felt a   
pang of pity for him. I was Robert Drake, and if I had willed it, I could become Iceman, no   
longer a creature of delicate flesh and blood but a being of pure and solid ice. If I had   
willed it, I could freeze the amazingly attractive Remy Lebeau in place and have my way with   
him and release the tension pent up inside me that was never dispelled by my constant joking ...  
around, though I tried in vain to convince myself that if I was never serious it would go away...   
Bobby wanted to feel a man's calloused hands caressing his body more than anything in the   
world, a fact alone that almost made me recall my wandering psyche in panic, but I stayed,   
soothing my unfounded fears by reassuring myself that you couldn't catch gay. I wasn't the one   
with the boner that could drill a hole through the ceiling if he let it out, he was.  
I was Bobby Drake, and at the age of twelve I was faced with three cold, hard facts: I   
was gay, I was a mutant, and my Father would rather kill a "fag" or a "mutie" than have either   
one even look at him crooked. I masturbated guiltily for a few years, until I couldn't stand   
the fear of having my Dad stumble upon me whacking off to pictures of body builders in   
magazines. I taught myself to slip comments about pretty girls at school into conversations   
with my parents over dinner, to walk with my shoulders squared and my chest puffed out, like   
the football players did, to scoff at the subjects of cooking, cleaning and sewing, and to   
suppress my supernatural fashion sense and ask my mother for help on picking clothes out for   
the most dreaded times of my life: dates.   
Yes, going out with a girl was something I hated more than controlling my body while showering   
after gym class, more than sleeping over at an attractive male friend's house, more than talking   
to my father. From the minute I would pull into her (whoever she was didn't matter, I didn't   
like any of them) driveway to those painful last moments when we sat in the car, her hoping for   
a good-night kiss and me wishing for the world to end. My life went on like this, with each   
Friday night being the same, until I was sixteen and I took a walk with my "girlfriend" after a   
school dance.   
The roar of a masculine car's engine alerted me to the presence of someone more than me and her,   
and shouts and hollers caused my stomach to tighten up and a sense of foreboding to wash over me.  
Time moved quickly until three guys from school stood around us, one holding a bat, and the   
others knives.   
"Why don't you come with us, some real men ?!" one guy sneered, jerking at the girl's arm. Now,   
don't get me wrong, I didn't feel anything for her, really, but I couldn't just let her be   
treated like that. I began to stammer something about leaving her alone, but he continued his   
jeers.   
"I see you staring at me in the showers, Drake! No fag stares at Tom Jensen in the showers   
and--!" he began to scream, swinging his bat. Liquid ice pouring from my outstretched hand   
froze the words in his mouth and stopped his bat inches from my face. The rest of that night   
was a blur, except for two things in my mind. The moment I laid eyes on Scott Summers, and the   
look in my father's face when I told him I was going to go to New York, to a school for people   
like me, for mutants.   
I wanted to cry just then, pouring over the thick volumes that made of Iceman's memory banks,   
but I held off, hearing a question through Bobby's ears.  
"Bobby, you just gon' sit there or come play wit' Gambit ?!" came a Cajun's sensual voice.   
I couldn't help but smirk at the double-entendre hidden within Remy's words. I wanted to get up   
and play with him, but I really didn't. I was frozen there in my seat, I couldn't move under his   
casual, red-eyed gaze.   
Go on!, I urged him silently from my bed. And, maybe, just maybe, he heard me and listened   
because Bobby Drake, no, I stood up and grabbed a pool-cue.   
"I'm gonna beat the pants off o' you, Remy!" I heard myself saying, my face flushing at the   
way the words had just spilled out.  
"We'll see about 'dat, we'll see ...!" came the reply, wiping my embarrassment away. At that   
moment, I didn't think about the way my Father and I had only just gotten onto good terms,   
only after he was beaten within an inch of his life. I didn't even remark wistfully about Remy's   
relationship with Rogue. All I could think about was the fact that I was just a few feet away   
from the most beautiful creature on the planet, and I was having one hell of a good time!  
  
  
*Fin*  
*Continued Next Chapter*  



	4. Crime and Punishment (unfinished)

Chapter 4 - Crime and Punishment - 9/25/01  
In Two Parts: "the Storm, Revisited" and "the King of Thieves"  
  
Ok, yes, I'm guilty! I couldn't take the pressure anymore, the feeling of Ororo's body   
and mind over-lapping mind, I had to take just one more (or maybe a few more, no more like three   
to four times a week...) peak into her mind, which was, from what I'd seen on my first glimpse,   
like a swirling tempest. But, I won't bore you, or embarrass myself, by relating the details of   
all those times I just sat quietly in her psyche and looked down at myself, the virtually   
perfect, African-American body, blending just the right hues of her black mother and white   
father, or her body, which was truly a gift from the gods which she once believed herself to   
be, or the clothes that she wore, as if she was trying to get me to spray my pants every time   
I thought of her ...Far more interesting ... Well, not to me, but probably to you, is the things   
glimpsed in her memories, her intricate personality, her fears her loves, the time she lost her   
virginity ... Ok, that's the last one, I promise!  
Now, this isn't going to come from just one instance of me snooping around her mind, but   
kind of a compilation of them all. But they all started with that increasingly familiar feeling   
that I was being lifted from myself and sinking into myself, where I was Ororo Munroe.  
I was Ororo Munroe, the most human Goddess floating around the not-so-glamorous super-  
heroine world. It wasn't all flying around, saving the day, with villains black and heroes white.  
My world existed in millions of shades of gray, where great sacrifice was a needed thing and an   
everyday occurrence. There was always consuming regret whenever I killed the bad-guy, because,   
even villains have feelings, even villains feel it when a bolt of lightning ten times hotter   
than the surface of the sun rips through their nervous system. There was always that lingering   
doubt, that maybe Xavier's team wasn't the team I should be fighting for, that maybe that humans   
would repay us, at the end of our years, with just more hate and violence ... And, there was   
always the vivid recollection, whenever I entered a crowded room or a small space, of the day   
when my home in Cairo was bombed by terrorists, incinerating my parents instantly and raining   
down on me with tons of brick and mortar.   
That day and on into the days following I was entombed in the pile of rubble for so long   
of a time that everything became a painful blur. That feeling of hopelessness, that gnawing   
hunger that ate away at your knowing that you would be rescued, it was all consuming, I couldn't   
even cry, I couldn't scream for help, I couldn't breathe except for dust-laden air filtering in   
through miniscule crevices in the coffin of stone and plaster and memories, memories of the   
house and my parents, all thrust upon me like an avalanche.   
Sure, there was a happy ending. I was rescued, I became a thief, enslaved by a psychic   
entity, the thoughts of which make me shudder even today, and finally I took a trip to Kenya and   
never returned, for I was Ororo, Goddess Incarnate of the people living there, where my mother   
had once lived as Queen. I was Life. Without me, there would be no rains for their crops,   
no cool breezes to relieve them of fatigue under the blistering African sun. Goddess, without   
me there was no sun, no moon, no stars, no atmosphere, no gravity, no life, no nothing.   
Without me was void, or so I thought ... Until Charles Xavier appeared. He was my savior,   
my life-preserver, the only thing keeping me afloat in the crashing waves of delusion and   
self-centeredness. Though once again I was bringing life to the needy, be it the X-Men trapped   
on Krakoa, enslaved for their mutant energies, or the countless mutants in the world being born   
every day. But, for once, I had a purpose, I was not a Goddess, an immortal being, with no   
reason to put my power into play but for the adoration and amusement of my peoples. I was Storm,   
a human, a mutant, a hero.  
Phew! Ororo Munroe's psyche was as consuming as the fears and doubts and feelings   
churning within her, every time I visited I had to pull myself away for five-ten minute   
intervals, for her mind was magnetic, drawing me from myself and into myself, err, I mean Her.   
But, the lessons I learned from her in just life in general were well worth the headaches.  
I had grown up with parents who, though loving, caring, somewhat liberal and who I knew   
would accept me, eventually, despite my mutantcy, were very strict in their principals and also   
very stuck in their ways. In their eyes, everything was black and white, just as Ororo knew it   
not to be. God was the eternal white, if you accepted Jesus into your heart you would make it   
into Heaven, no exceptions, if not, you were damned to Hell and Satan, the eternal black, for   
all eternity. I'm not stupid, I know that their opinions are not as old-fashioned and   
unchangeable as they made them out to be, and I knew that not everything I said was exactly   
what they believed, but what they believed would make me turn out alright in the end, but   
still ... It's hard not to act unbelievable naïve after growing up in a family with parents   
like that, and even harder to accept the fact that, they weren't always right about the things   
they said they were, but Ororo softened that blow for me.  
  
((DEFINITELY NOT A FINISHED PRODUCT HERE!!! I'M GETTING MAJOR CARPUL TUNNELS, THOUGH, SO I'M JUST   
PUTTING THIS UP AS A KIND OF TEASER, BECAUSE I DON'T LIKE TO BE SILENT FOR TOO LONG!!!  
--MONOL))  



End file.
